LIBRARY AS MAKERSPACE

So littleBits just announced on their website that they are releasing a build your own C3PO robot  for $100.  I would be a little nervous about circulating it because it has many of the delicate wires that could easily be ripped out but it would be a perfect edition for Hour of Code activities in December or other in house robot programs.  Note: A tablet or phone is required to program the droid to complete missions. On the note of delicate wires, I am so sick and tired of the regular littleBits makerspace kits we have coming back with broken battery chords.  I have pretty much replaced them every 2 checkouts. I just broke down and bought the USB bit and the AC adapter .  All batteries, power bits and chords will be removed! Here's an old post about what to include in those littlebits checkout kits because be warned some of those bits do not survive the wear and tear of children's take home use.

littleBits has a code kit!

This year was our most successful Hour of Code yet (IMHO). We had lots going on and it was pretty noisy in the kids room. Hour of Code on the website was assigned for homework so I don't have accurate stats on that but I did try to keep track of the extension activities with pictures and video . So here is the reflection on the week after the previous blog post about setup: As I have previously mentioned, every library has great services and events but how do we market them effectively? The most successful marketing strategy for us has been leaving demo projects out on the children's help desk. We had many conversations over the past week about Lego WeDo Robotics because the Ferris Wheel, which was built by a student during Tinkering Tuesdays, was on display for kids to ask about. As soon as we reeled them in, we could say, "If you have 30 minutes you can build one yourself today!"  Consequently, this also helped all the staff to learn how to do a quick progra...

Hour of Code week starts today! In addition to the free one hour tutorials on the website. We have a few passive unplugged activities such as binary code jewelry and " my robot friend ":   Along with iPads loaded with a whole folder of coding apps to try. My favorites are: Kodeable Scratch Jr. Daisy the Dinosaur We also left Lego WeDo kits at the front desk for kids to try and we'll have a special demo from the high school robotics club with Lego Mindstorms on Thursday.   Our new Sphero robot will be debuting this week. I'll bring him out during our regular Tinkering Tuesday session and after school for kids to try. He is connected to one of our iPads. My favorite app so far is Tickle .   It has a Scratch like block interface which requires a bit more thought to get him around than just driving him back and forth with a controller.  For quick fun demonstration try, Draw & Drive. You literally draw something on the iPad screen a...

I just read about cognitive load theory, developed by John Sweller, a professor at New South Wales Australia.  It's the notion that people can only hold seven pieces of information in their heads at one time. According to SLJ's "The Cognitive Connection," May 2015, recent research claims that we might be holding less, maybe 2 or 4 things (pg. 25).  With that in mind, I recently tried to recreate a "talking skull" with the Sparkfun Arduino kit that I made last Halloween (with hands on help from our local maker at the time). It was much easier said than done. I thought I had taken detailed pictures of the breadboard layout but upon recreation, I was flummoxed. I completely forgot how to do this! I should have taken the shots from above and clearly labeled the wires. I also should have taken a photo of the entire thing. I had a few white wires, one from the PR motion sensor, another from the servo. Which was which? So I shot a video, surely I shot...

After a fun month of building, painting, attaching, coding, 3D printing, our Arduino Interactive Wall has all the components in place! Still some painting and touch up to do. I plan to document all the circuitry and code so we can make sure it is safe to move to a new location. It was a BIG commitment of resources, time and treasure, but I felt it was worth it. One of the things I love about it is how we were able to collaborate with artist, Sally Dean, AND engineer, Kevin Osborn. They led us all in the concept and creation of it - adults and teens alike. It felt like we were taken on a creative journey together, following the lead of two seasoned experts. Is this tinkering? Not on the grander scale, but it was certainly problem-solving and skill-building. Some of the teens learned C++ coding, we all perfected our skills with Tinkercad 3D design work, and the movable parts were somewhat dictated by the teens' interests. All in all, about 12 library patrons participated in t...

Here's one of our Arduino interactive mural installation elements. The challenge for us is to find the balance between getting our Maker-in-Residence to install a few elements to give us a sense of what is possible and "jump-start" the installation but not doing the whole thing for us. We want our young patrons to build and explore the artistic and technological possibilities and learn the building blocks of 3D printing and programming for microprocessors. We have our work cut out for us and there may be some post-session mopping up to do, but that's okay.

We are starting to paint our garden, designed and facilitated by Duxbury artist, Sally Dean, on the plastic blue partition wall. The garden elements are being 3D printed by the kids and teens and today we will begin learning from Kevin Osborn, how to write Arduino code to make the servos that power the interactivity work! This is a big, on-going project, which is just the kind of thing we feel sparks creativity and BIG thinking in a Makerspace. Tools and equipment: Portable Partition from Minnesota company Acrylic paints , brushes, drop clothes, etc. Gridding out the garden design with a wax pencil Arduino kits from Sparkfun Lots of extra sensors and stuff from Adafruit Riley thought to glue gun details on that she had 3Doodled.

The next step in engaging girls into coding could be jewelbots. Jewelbots are friendship bracelets that will allow girls to communicate with each other while Bluetooth syncing with their iPhone and friend's bracelets. They remind me of a girl's hair elastic they are so thin (which might be a design flaw). The bracelets are not available just yet but you can get on the email list.  These bracelets will allow girls to send messages between synced bracelets or get message updates about social media or texts from their phone. So how do girls learn code? The program is Arduino open source based and the website alludes to being able to program a multitude of different commands into the bracelet. Boston.com reports girls will be able to send messages through Morse code in the bracelets. Another merging of old technology and new!

Just got my Lego We-Do and Mindstorms robotics shipment thanks to a generous grant. It took me about 30 minutes from out of the box to my first finished We Do project which always boosts my self esteem as a scientist. It helped to have background familiarity with a simple coding program like Scratch or Hopscotch and Lego instructions. The curriculum suggests as young as 2nd grade and I can see that this would be right up their alley not to mention filling a gap in our programming for 2nd and 3rd graders. I ended up purchasing the 16 person classroom set from Lego Education which includes 8 We Do sets, a site license, and curriculum binder so I can put it on as many computers as I need for a total of almost $1500 (you can buy them separately for a much cheaper price). I wanted a site license because we don't have enough laptops necessary for single licenses to run a program and I wanted the freedom of downloading them to as many computers in house as I could. The teacher curri...

Hour of Code, an international collaboration to promote computer science to kids and families of all ages begins on Monday December 8th and continues throughout the week. Using hourofcode.com , companies around the world offer tutorials for students to experiment with many coding programs and languages such as Scratch, Python, and more. Learn how to code JAVA, make an app video game, or an interactive Christmas card quickly and easily. Students who complete one hour of coding that week will receive a certificate (and in our library get a chance to enter a raffle for a free Game Stop gift card).  Kids can sign up for a free hour of code account to keep track of their time from year to year but it's not mandatory.  This week is a great opportunity for libraries to provide a drop-in exploratory program without the stress of learning or prepping all these platforms. There are multiple video tutorials on the site.  It is also a great collaboration between local schools and...

Carol plays with code changes.  Taking the time to set up our computers before our Arduino  group gathers really paid off. We were ready jump right in and  work through the excellent little Sparkfun Inventor's Kit booklet  one project at a time. Chris Connors supervised, gave advice, and  encouraged us to explore the options in the code once we set up a  project.  We played with LED light sequences, sound sequences,  and blinking speed.  Joining us were Jed Phillips, from the Ames Library in Easton,  and Melissa McCleary, from the Pemborke Public Library. David Murphy's blinking light circuit.  We are now thinking, "What can we build with this?"  Halloween  comes to mind and our Halloween maven, Carol Segar, is already  thinking about setting up some spooky rooms here at the library  powered by Arduino. For me, the lesson is: don't be put off by the unfamiliar. Give a new medium a chance to reveal its...

What will the public library look like in the near future? As more and more people access information resources online, the role of the public library is growing and morphing into something beyond a collection of resources to be checked out, used and returned by the community. It is becoming a place where people learn new skills, access hard-to-find and/or expensive hardware and software, and meet up with fellow lifelong learners to stay fit, healthy, mentally alert and have fun! The vision of the 21st century library is a place that is open all week long, all year around, and full of exciting activities and resources that the average citizen may be interested in but may not be comfortable investing in right away. Because the library is open 6-7 days a week, it is the perfect place for the community to come together to learn and then practice newly acquired skills or find others with whom to share a passion or interest. How is this different from a school or community cente...

Just when I thought they couldn't surprise me any more, my Middle School group did it again. We held an Electronics Open House this afternoon to show the world the kinds of projects and areas of discovery we have been exploring this year in our Makerspace. They rose to the occasion by being ambassadors of making things and seemed to have fun, too. Soldering badges, Stop Motion with our ipads and iStop Motion software, Scratch programming, MaKeyMaKey goofiness (asparagus game controllers anyone?), how to build a basic electrical motor, and the ever-present "Take Apart Table"rounded out the activities. We had parents, kids, staff members, librarian friends from other towns come to see what we were doing.  Of course we hung our club banner by the door. Now if we could only interest some girls to join us.  But I'm working on a plan......!

For a full year, we have held a weekly tech session for young teens - mostly eighth grade boys. We played with Little Bits, Legos, MaKey MaKey, soldering, construction projects, programming challenges, and more. Though we regret girls haven't participated, we have some plans to grow in a more inclusive direction. More about that in another post. What we DID accomplish by holding weekly sessions,  was an experiment in content and form. We tried a variety of skill-building sessions, physical and intellectual challenges and learned a lot about what we can and cannot do in an after school setting at the public library. Today, we did a "dress rehearsal" for the Open House we are planning for next Tuesday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. - to which we hope many kids and adults come! Learning how things work is, ultimately more important to us then magically assembling things that fly, move, interact, etc. It's super seductive to merely assemble cool stuff, but we feel it is a...

Here at the Duxbury Free Library we have geared up to help people of all ages participate in the Hour of Code. Of course, folks can do their hour anywhere they have access to wifi, but we're making it easy to do it at the library!   HOUR OF CODE We have designated computers for this project, volunteers (our PHILS group and others ) coming after school to help anyone who might be a bit hesitant to dip their toes in, and bookmarks with a list of sites people can follow up with to learn and practice more! It's important for both boys and girls to see coding as a part of life - no matter what their career goals. Every modern job will require some knowledge of computer coding to be fully mastered. It's really logical, fun and satisfying to practice the computational skills on the Hour of Code web site !

Introducing the PHILS to the coding tutorial for the December "Hour of Code" was fun and, just when we thought we'd have to string them along for a while, the organizers came up with the whole series of tutorials on their web site!                  http://csedweek.org/learn2 We needed the practice run to figure out how much we can rely on using the library wireless connection with our new iPads or do we need to stick to the wired desktops in the Reference and Children's areas. Lucky for us, Denise had arrange for a new wireless router to be installed today in the lower level so now the whole building should have a strong signal all day long. Yay, Denise! We're hoping that will give us adequate connectivity to handle all the old and young Coders we hope will participate in the week long, "HOUR OF CODE" from Dec. 9 - Dec. 14th. Then, later in the week, we had our first "Wearable Electronics" workshop as a way to gain the interest of gi...